India Needs to Know: Arnab Goswami Quits Times Now

Arnab Goswami, Times Now editor-in-chief has finally quit the Times Group after 10 years of association since the launch of the news channel in 2006 but he is not hanging his boots right away and is keen to start his own venture.

Goswami started his career with The Telegraph but in less than a year joined Pranay Roy’s New Delhi Television (NDTV) in 1995 as a reporter and anchor and soon became one of the core team along with Rajdeep Sardesai and Vikram.

He joined Times group in 2006 to launch Times Now, which he has creditably taken to a new level with his aggressive NEWS HOUR that intrigued many politicians, commentators, critics and wrong doers alike. The change in his attitude during the peak of his career when the channel’s News Hour became the central program watched across the country by millions of people began to spell his imminent downfall as well.

He was seen suddenly vouching for BJP policies, praising the prime minister and interviewing him a toned-down voice. In some instances, he even made blunt remarks on suspects as potential future rapists though he could evade legal consequences in many instances.

Nonetheless, he has taken Times Now to No. 1 slot as the Broadcast Audience Research Council India (BARC) shows that Times Now clocked 6,32,000 impressions in week 42 of 2016 (October 15 to October 21). Its nearest rival CNN News18 clocked 2,89,000 impressions in the same week. (Impressions are the total number of views a show gets during its telecast).

His show News Hour was contributing 70% of the channel’s total ad-revenue. Now he is planning to start his own TV channel and speculation is high that he might return on other news channel soon like Rajdeep Sardesai who had left CNN-IBN to join India Today a year later.